Britain's favourite summer pastime, strange to recall, used to be complaining about the drizzle. Happily, we are nothing if not adaptable. As a week of blistering weather intensified further across most of Britain yesterday, pushing temperatures to record-breaking July levels, the country was demonstrating its mastery of a new hobby: trying to keep cool as roads melted and train tracks buckled.

Yesterday was the hottest July day ever, according to the Met Office, with a temperature of 36.3C recorded in Charlwood, Surrey, surpassing the previous record set in 1911. But if parts of Britain's infrastructure were giving a good impression of a country that still can't quite cope when the sun comes out, many people knew exactly how to deal with the soaring temperatures: disrobe, drink a lot and - ideally - locate somewhere to get wet.

In Cheltenham, where the Guardian thermometer showed a sizzling 35C, hundreds crammed into the town's lido, splashing noisily and carpeting its grass lawns with a thick pile of pinkish limbs.

"The only way to cope with this is wear as few clothes as possible," said Anood Al-Samerai, 25, who, true to her word, was in a bikini. "And the only place to be is anywhere but work. In fact, they should give everyone time off when the weather is like this. Look how happy it makes everyone."

Juliet Robinson, squeezed into a narrow strip of shade at the pool's edge, said she was also enjoying the temperatures, but added: "We do tend to go a bit mad in the sun. I wouldn't say as a country we're very well set up for this kind of weather. Look at this pool: there's no shade, there are no umbrellas."

A childcare consultant, she said she was concerned about the lack of suncream applied to many of the children flinging themselves into the water.

Away from the water, however, lunchtime workers tended to avoid the sun; though the parks were busy, most huddled in clusters under trees, with only a brave few stretched out in bikinis or shorts. Some city centre shoppers navigated carefully along the few inches of midday shade cast by grand sandstone buildings. And no one could talk of anything but the weather - how to convert Fahrenheit to Centigrade, how awful it must be being pregnant in the heat, how hot it had been when they had got up.

Jill Scamell, sheltering in the shade for a cigarette break, said she was finding the temperatures in her workplace, the high street branch of NatWest, "horrendous". "I'm a bit of a sun worshipper, so normally it can't get too hot for me, but it is too much in my work. We have got lots of fans going and the air conditioning is on, but in this sort of weather there's only so much that air conditioning can do."

Muriel Sunnuck, on a coach holiday from her home in Suffolk, said she hated to wish away the good weather but had been finding it all a little too much, especially on the coach from Gloucester that morning. "I do like to see the sun, of course, but I'd really like it just a little bit cooler." In this, she had an unlikely seconder. Doug Cormack has been selling ice-creams on Cheltenham's high street for 13 years; surprisingly, yesterday wasn't his definition of a perfect day.

"To be honest, when it's as hot as this, people don't want ice-cream. Ice-cream's too sickly. They want a drink instead. Or ice-lollies, but I don't do them." He'll be pleased, he said, when things start to cool down a bit today.

Shorts, school closures and stampeding cows

· Broad areas of central and southern England toasted in temperatures of 34 to 35C, while Wales equalled its July record, reaching a peak of 33.6 at RAF Valley in Anglesey. Scotland and Northern Ireland both reached around 30C.

· London bus drivers were threatened with the sack for wearing shorts, despite on-board temperatures exceeding 50C. The Speaker in the Commons, Michael Martin, was more lenient, relaxing the dress code to let reporters in the press gallery remove their jackets.

· Train lines buckled in Birmingham, where temperatures topped 36C, causing severe delays. In the West Midlands and Staffordshire gritters were called in after road surfaces melted.

· Scores of schools closed early including 10 in central London, four in Merseyside and two in Birmingham. Hundreds of schools cancelled sports day amid fears for children's health.

· A jogger was hospitalised after a stampeding herd of cows in Dorset, thought to have been irritated by a heat-induced increase in flies, charged him. Tempers were wisely cooled in Colchester zoo, however, where lions were given blocks of ice, flavoured with blood.

· Large areas of the Peak District national park in Derbyshire were closed to the public amid fears that fires could be sparked in dry woodland.

· One of Britain's biggest ever heath fires, which began on Thursley Common, Surrey, on Friday, continued to burn. Hot, dry conditions had impeded efforts to quell the blaze, which has destroyed 370 acres of heathland.

· Gardener, Marilyn Jamieson, 71, from Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, reported that her primroses - which normally blossom only in spring - had flowered for a second time.

· The National Grid asked suppliers to increase electricity supplies following a surge in demand from air conditioning systems.

· In Cambridgeshire, members of the Spartan Rescue service distributed 400 litres of water to stranded drivers after an accident on the A14 by weaving through traffic on quad bikes.